new year’s eve: ashcraft’s shooting star + ‘winter’s tale’

 (Video link at Heliotown) Two days before New Year’s, we came across this passage from Mark Halprin’s Winter’s Tale, describing the moment the old year turned into new: Then the hands of the clock started to race like the tortoise and the hare, and both reached midnight at the same time. The clock struck along with…

Read More

happy holidays from ‘the improvised life’

(Listen to music* while you watch the gif.) We’re wishing you a WONDROUS holiday, and hoping you’ll get to do some serious, lazy-dog hanging out between Christmas and New Years’. We’ll be posting intermittently, while we work on a new idea (we’ll be listening to WKCR’s weeklong Bach festival, streamable here.) We’ll be back full-tilt…

Read More

last minute holiday gift(s)

Although we’ve definitely disengaged from the holiday gift buying mania, we DO love the pleasure of giving gifts. Our favorite solution, do-able even at the very last minute, are charity donations. You can give money to a charity like the Robin Hood Foundation or Doctors Without Borders and then send out e-cards in your loved one’s…

Read More

sally talks holiday table diy’s on ‘the splendid table’ +

Starting this evening, The Splendid Table will feature Sally talking to Lynne Rosetto Kasper about the holiday table: how to make makeshift tables and seating for a once-a-year crowd, as well as dandy ways to decorate it. Go to Splendid Table’s site for info on when the show airs in your area, or to download…

Read More

george lois and the cowardly lion on ‘courage’

CreativeMornings Short: George Lois on Courage from CreativeMornings on Vimeo. (Video link here.) In this short, great clip from design legend George Lois‘ CreativeMornings talk, he gives what he considers to be his most essential piece of advice for creatives — for anyone — : “be courageous!“. And suddenly we realized that Lois is curiously reminiscent of the Cowardly…

Read More

brightly-painted logs and branches

“Wake” by Michael McGillis is a 95-foot long pathway enclosed on both sides by brightly-painted cut logs; it’s on display at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota. Although the installation is apparently a commentary on humanity’s disruption of nature, for us (barbarians!) it’s an idea for embellishing the logs we hauled home after Hurricane Sandy, or still have our…

Read More

gif-imagination: one voluptuous fire hydrant!

We LOVE gifs, and are amazed that a little bit of code that can animate an image, making it live. Lately, we’ve noticed gif artists applying the process to create new visions of things, like this fire hydrant that a gif-artist “saw” as voluptuous statuary. Here’s a whole Tumblr-full of gifs from Moving the Still,…

Read More

tabletop decor idea: vintage toy truck candleholder

While we were poking around floral designer Emily Thompson’s website, we came across this swell little tabletop decoration: pillar candles arranged on the bed of a vintage toy pickup truck (all sorts available at Ebay.) Related posts: fab bird’s nest wreath (+ other found holiday decor ideas) diy holiday wreaths (out of just about anything) alt christmas…

Read More

fab bird’s nest wreath (+ other found holiday decor ideas)

After we posted about making wreaths of “just about anything“, Maria Robledo sent us a picture of a wreath that pushes that idea in the most wonderful and surprising way: a real bird’s nest nestled into winter branches whose leaves have dropped.  It was a gift from inspired floral designer Emily Thompson, who even left bits…

Read More

‘there are still so many helpers’…(for newtown)

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison… When President Obama said those names aloud today during his moving speech at Newtown, our hearts broke, again. We found ourselves comforted by the words-gone-viral of kindly old Fred Rogers —Mr. Rogers — advocate and true friend of children for eons. It is our experience that there are…

Read More

‘a new way to cook’ (gift idea + a trove of recipes)

Some time ago, Michael Druzinsky, an acquaintance of mine who is a composer, emailed his friend Mark Bernstein, who created the idea-mapping softwear Tinderbox, to ask if he’d mind talking to me about his very interesting software. Michael forwarded Mark’s reply:  “Sally Schneider’s book, A New Way to Cook, changed my life. I’ve given it to lots…

Read More

Posts navigation